In the past, in order to find an expert to learn from, you either had to be lucky to have somebody living near you or you had to travel to find that expert. You had to have a lot of money in order to get world class education, but nowadays it’s much easier. Technology brought the world together and turned it into a small village. Consequently, learning has become easier and more connected. You could connect and communicate with experts in a certain profession in a matter of minutes or seconds.

Online courses or MOOCs are becoming more and more relevant. You could learn real and applicable skills that are used in the real world from experts while you are in your underpants. You can get a job without a college degree. You can learn a lot of things online now, not just a lot of things, but almost anything online. All of this for little to no cost at all. You just need to be motivated, determined and put in some effort.

Another thing about MOOCs is that you aren’t learning alone. Some courses have hundreds and even thousands of students enrolled at a time. There are usually discussions boards and forums where students can discuss the course material and help each other. And since most MOOCs are international this gives students the ability to interact and make friends with people from various cultures and various backgrounds. This makes MOOCs give a college like experience minus physically meeting new people.

Though, a negative thing about MOOCs is that if you aren’t motivated enough you might not complete it. Since MOOCs lack the physical interaction that traditional courses offer it might be easy to lose interest or forget about them. This can be solved by taking the online course with a friend or making friends and study groups within the course. This would also make taking the course more fun and interesting.

Technology is moving and advancing very quickly, a lot of popular jobs that exist now didn’t exist 10 years ago. Jobs like digital marketing specialist, cloud services specialist and data scientists didn’t exist 10 years ago. And reports from the U.S. Department of Labor, McKinsey and Company, and the World Economic Forum say that 65% of grade-school kids will have jobs in the future that don’t exist today. Experts now believe that almost 50% of occupations existing today will be completely redundant by 2025. Therefore learning new skills and keeping up with the fast-paced advance of technology is a must.

Written by: Osama Waheib

Online learning and virtual classrooms are quickly becoming a replacement for traditional classrooms, because they are cheaper and more flexible. Many students reported that they can concentrate in a virtual classroom more than they do when they are in an actual classroom.

To put it simply the benefits and advantages of a virtual classroom outweigh the benefits of traditional classrooms by leaps and bounds they are simply on a whole another level than traditional classroom they just are… Ok I am done that enough praise for virtual classrooms; let’s get into why they are better than traditional classrooms in more details, shall we?

1. Simplicity and flexibility: Location and time are the two most limiting factors when wanting to learn something. Virtual classrooms almost completely eliminate those two limitations, in an online course or a virtual classroom you can work at your own pace, and so you can adjust it to your own schedule.
2. More productive: With the integration of technology into the learning process; clever design, user experience and multimedia virtual classrooms can prove to be more efficient and deliver better results.
3. Much lower costs: Online courses are a more affordable option than traditional courses; they provide you with the most up to date content with way cheaper costs. The total costs for a traditional course are usually higher than base cost, due to costs of commuting; some traditional programs even require you to buy expensive textbooks. These additional costs aren’t present in online courses where the only commuting you will do is walking a couple of steps to get to your laptop, that’s if it’s even far from you and if your course requires a textbook you can  find it online easily in the form an e-book.
4. More convenient, comfortable and friendly environment: As previously mentioned online courses allow students to plan their study time around their day and that’s only the tip of the iceberg; students don’t have to attend physical sessions and the material is electronically sent to them, then they can read the material and do the assignments. All of this gives the student time for his work and/or precious time with his family instead of the stress that comes with having to go to a physical session; fighting traffic and finding parking places in order to do so.
5. More interaction: Although there is controversy on whether virtual classrooms offer more interaction than traditional classrooms, one thing is certain: shy students can interact and participate more in virtual classrooms, some even report they can focus more because virtual class rooms are more distraction free.

In conclusion, I recommend virtual classrooms due to the freedom, flexibility and ease of use. They are just much simpler and free you from a lot of the stress and fatigue that comes with real classrooms.

Written by: Osama Waheib